Digital Transformation is all about leveraging technology to elevate customer experience, empower data-driven decision making and increase corporate agility through the integration of business and IT.
One of the major factors impeding digital transformation is IT complexity.
Having multiple platforms for different data types, managing high volumes of data, integrating systems from multiple vendors and inconsistent user interfaces are the major causes of complexity in IT architecture.
IT Complexity is part and parcel of a growing organization. With every innovation and improvement in a business process comes an increase in the level and layers of IT architecture. Though the kind of tasks few tools are supposed to do make them complex, unnecessary complexity can hamper the growth of the organization.
The first step in simplifying IT is the elimination of point solutions and legacy systems.
Breaking the Case for Point Solutions
Many organizations purchase a point solution to solve a particular issue and in time end up deploying several standalone solutions as problems keep adding up. While point solutions deliver highly specific feature sets to solve a single business problem, having multiple of these can make things a bit chaotic.
Having different solutions can cause unneeded operational friction – IT administrators have to learn to use different tools, affecting productivity.
Another drawback of point solutions is the lack of organization-wide transparency and control. Each solution having its own database and being managed by different teams causes silos in organizations.
Most point solutions don’t integrate with each other, require different user credentials, have different user interfaces, incur heavy costs and require more manpower for maintenance.
The Challenge with Legacy Tools
Digital disruption is largely associated with modernization of technology and this requires eliminating legacy systems in the organization. Legacy tools are last-generation derivatives of up-market solutions built in the 1990s when endpoints stayed nicely on their desks and didn’t move around. Constant technology change has weakened the value of legacy systems and the need to get rid of it has risen.
In the 2018 State of IT Operations Benchmark Survey, 27% of the participants said legacy systems hamper growth and innovation in their organizations. Not only are legacy systems expensive to maintain and hard to support, but do not have readily available expertise to maintain the system or troubleshoot problems that arise. Many legacy platforms do not support the latest security procedures and patches risking organization’s IT security.
Calculating the True Cost of Legacy IT and Point Solutions
Replacing solutions or upgrading legacy systems can be expensive. One has to calculate if the benefits of digital transformation outweigh the costs of transitioning to new systems.
As an example, let’s consider the Federal IT spending in the United States. Of the $48.5 billion reported to IT Dashboard, 78.5 percent ($38.1 billion) is spent on legacy systems.
Legacy IT and point solutions cause inefficiency and on an average 48% of employees are wasting at least three hours a day working with inefficient IT systems. For an organization with 5000 employees, this equates to 960 days per year. How much would this be costing your organization?
Unification – The First Step to Transformation
Unification of IT means tying together all processes, resources, and tools to make IT agile and easy.
Unification requires the implementation of a single comprehensive next-gen platform which provides a single view of the entire IT system, enables centralized control and automation and reduces the complexity in managing IT. This transparency of a unified platform enables business leaders and IT teams to optimize existing functions and processes. And in the process create new competitive advantages, transformation, and innovation, increasing productivity growth.
Unification of IT aims to save money, time and resources to enable your company to become a more strategic player in the business.
Learn how to Jumpstart your Digital Transformation with Unified IT here.
